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“Python's batteries are leaking”

pyfound.blogspot.com

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Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#91

Post by latortuga »

pariahHN wrote: post #85

I may be terribly wrong about this, but I would think that in general if someone makes an improvement to something you make then you would want to integrate that person and their improvement in some way. Treat like any other update: mention it in the version notes and warn about compatibility of code using the previous version. I know that renovation can suck but it's something that we need to be doing. A comprehensi…

> How much can you trust a third-party dev vs the core team?

Seems like a false dilemma to me. The core team could still maintain "blessed" packages that don't ship with the default installation.

> why would you want to keep it separate if it is so much better?

This is addressed in the article, most of the 5th paragraph is dedicated to it.

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#92

Post by geofft »

alexdong wrote: post #54
jMyles wrote: post #21

Guido is a good dude, through-and-through, despite his perhaps bad behavior here. Amber is nothing short of an open source hero, having brought Twisted, one of the best open source projects in the world, to new heights. Her insights are as important as anyone in the python community, and after six consecutive PyCons sprinting at the Twisted table (including literally in a chair with Amber to my left and Glyph to my r…

The problem with rants is it stings and it divides. When it comes to constructive criticism, I think Amber did a good job with her criticism but can do better at the constructive front. Her problem statement was spot on and I agree that the direction she proposed is a good one. However, to separate the standard library from the core is probably even more dramatic than the Python 2 to 3 migration. Is that what the com…

As mentioned in the article, this has already been explored with the "ensurepip" approach.

And it wasn't the only thing at the language summit that proposed expanding that approach: there was a discussion of carrying time zone updates in the same way, by shipping something with the interpreter that works but allowing updates from PyPI. http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/05/paul-ganssle-time-zones-...

So I think the development community / target audience at the language summit already understands the pros and cons of the suggested approach and the technical route to get there. (For an end user, my guess is the experience will be that anything in the Python 3.x standard library today will still be in the Python 3.x standard library, but you'll have to `pip install` a newer version if you want more features, and you get the benefit of being able to `pip install` something from the standard library where you previously couldn't.)

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#93

Post by thaumasiotes »

gcb0 wrote: post #68
avar wrote: post #45

She seems to be advocating that Python do pretty much what Perl has ended up doing, which is "we have some batteries, but we haven't been adding new ones for a decade or more". The reasons are similar, it's a constant drag on core compiler development to need to support various batteries included that most core contributors aren't going to care about, so it's easier to tell people "use CPAN". There was even talk of "…

And perl solved that perfectly: just let the OS/distro solve the 100s of packages. And it have been solved, despite you claiming otherwise on your last paragraph. When did you have to use cpan in a modern system? Compare that to how many times you had to use pip. Now, if you use a crappy OS or distro (or god forbid, some container built by you have no idea who on top of nobody knows what) then yeah, you are bound to…

> if you must have a system that parses XML but for company policy is not allowed to have even the means of performing a network request. With python you either have both xml and an http library and whatever else included and you will either have to do a special package with a striped down python+xml only or get a corporate exception. While on other languages you can install only the xml parser component package and your code will run happily and be compliant with company policy.

...wouldn't the company policy involve removing the means of performing a network request from the computer, making the notional capabilities of the software irrelevant?

Python will let you drive network requests through the OS. It's just that you wouldn't normally want to.

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#94

Post by ryl00 »

geofft wrote: post #44
resoluteteeth wrote: post #9

When I first used python like 20 years ago I was blown away by how much functionality was blown in, and it can be annoying using languages where even the most basic functionality involves downloading 50 packages from the internet, but on the other hand the standard library does seem to be a mess now.

I found that attractive when I first learned Python, but when I (much more recently) started picking up Rust, I was blown away by how easy and normal it is to use external packages: the build tool and package manager are the same thing and shipped with the language, the hello-world-equivalent docs assume you're using it, and even the Rust compiler and standard library themselves can (carefully) depend on external pac…

> When Python's standard library was first being written, there were no easy package managers for any language

Wasn't perl's CPAN developed around that time period (mid '90s) ?

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#95

Post by tannhaeuser »

bdcravens wrote: post #42
pavlov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he’s simply burnt out? The pressure of being in charge of something as big as Python must be intense. People make demands on his time and expect the “benevolent dictator” to cunningly solve everything like a modern day Salomon. I know he gave up the title, but as he personifies Python, I imagine the influx of requests for his attention may not have subsided much.

Has DHH, Matz, Ryan Dahl, the Allaires, Larry Wall, or anyone else who founded a language or related-project been known for behaving like this?

Ryan Dahl didn't invent a new language, just a pragmatic async server runtime based on CommonJS and inspired by Ruby/Rack. He walked away just about two years after having launched node.js to focus on what he studied in the first place (math, ML), annoyed by his celebrity status [1].

[1]: https://mappingthejourney.com/single-post/2017/08/31/episode...

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#96

Post by geofft »

pavlov wrote: post #17
mlevental wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is that an excuse for being uncivil? if you're burnt out then don't attend the talk? simple.

From my own past experience with depression, it’s not as simple as “I’ll just stop doing all the things that have kept me in motion until now.” This is not meant to speculate on van Rossum’s health, just trying to point out that there are situations where apparent rudeness may be out of the person’s immediate control.

If you're sufficiently in control of your actions to keep developing a major programming language, you're sufficiently in control of your actions to either not be rude while doing so or be aware that you're going to be rude and need to find a way of dealing with the situation (avoiding it, taking extra time before speaking, working with a therapist, whatever). Mental health issues don't excuse bad behavior.

(Also, personally, if I were behaving poorly I would much prefer people to say "hm, 'geofft is being rude but I know he's a better person than that and can improve" and not "hm, 'geofft is being rude, that's just the way he is, I wonder if he's got mental health problems.")

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#97

Post by drugme »

agumonkey wrote: post #13
pavlov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he’s simply burnt out? The pressure of being in charge of something as big as Python must be intense. People make demands on his time and expect the “benevolent dictator” to cunningly solve everything like a modern day Salomon. I know he gave up the title, but as he personifies Python, I imagine the influx of requests for his attention may not have subsided much.

Was he like that before ? some say he was always balanced even when python3 came out. let's hope everything settles smoothly :)

It's safe to say that he did an outstanding job for the first 27 years.

But everyone has their limits.

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#98

Post by drugme »

DannyBee wrote: post #86
agumonkey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he like that before ? some say he was always balanced even when python3 came out. let's hope everything settles smoothly :)

My only experiences with Guido when he was a Googler were incredibly unpleasant. (This was years ago, and i don't have the email exchange anymore, so i'm doing my best to describe it from memory) I reported a bug I had debugged pretty heavily and believed was likely a bug in the appengine datastore (this was before it was publicly available, IIRC), with a fairly detailed repro recipe, etc. (I was not on the appengine…

Your experience was unfortunate, but it sounds like ultimately it just wasn't the right job for him. Which happens to everyone at some point or another.

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#99

Post by bdcravens »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #95
bdcravens wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has DHH, Matz, Ryan Dahl, the Allaires, Larry Wall, or anyone else who founded a language or related-project been known for behaving like this?

Ryan Dahl didn't invent a new language, just a pragmatic async server runtime based on CommonJS and inspired by Ruby/Rack. He walked away just about two years after having launched node.js to focus on what he studied in the first place (math, ML), annoyed by his celebrity status [1]. [1]: https://mappingthejourney.com/single-post/2017/08/31/episode...

that's what I meant by "a language or related-project"

Once he chose to step away, he truly stepped away, which is a good model for any open source maintainer.

Re: “Python's batteries are leaking”

#100

Post by tptacek »

geofft wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want pyca/cryptography. The last thing in the world you want is a standard crypto library that no experts are enthusiastic about maintaining. Golang had an unfair advantage here, because the language team included cryptography engineers. It would be weird if most languages had the same kind of crypto in their stdlibs. I think there is in general nothing wrong with a language ecosystem where key parts of the whole…

Also I expect that a) pyca/cryptography is maintained by as many people as Go's cryptography libraries are, so the worry about maintenance by small groups doesn't argue in favor of Go here b) the number of people maintaining any particular module in the Python standard library is very small (e.g., IIRC there's one maintainer for `ssl`). I would be surprised if either 'kentm or their security team wanted the rest of t…

I think we're saying basically the same thing.
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